What's Up: September 28-October 5

This week marks the official start of “Spooky Season”, October. It brings with it the type of weather you would associate with October: a little chilly and cloudy.

This week there is a cold front passing through. It may be a few days before we get some clear skies. If there are gaps in the clouds or clear skies later in the week, here are a few things to look for: The bright full moon, the planet Mercury, Saturn at standstill, and a bright double star, Albireo.

On the nights that are clouded over you can partake in an easy and fun citizen science project that helps classify deep-space galaxies, “Galaxy Zoo”, or you can probe the universe in other wavelengths of astronomy through various websites!

This week the moon will slowly increase in brightness until Thursday evening when it reaches its full phase. This full moon alone will highly limit what deep-sky objects are visible since they are so faint. Thursday evening also marks Mercury’s greatest elongation, or in simpler terms, the furthest distance that Mercury appears from the sun. Despite the small inner planet being at its greatest elongation, it is only a few degrees above the western horizon after sunset, so don’t miss it!

Monday night Saturn will appear to stand still relative to the stationary background stars. The gas giant is coming out of its retrograde loop and the relative motions of the Earth and Saturn give the illusion of a standstill ringed planet.

Roughly 30 minutes after sunset the brightest stars will begin appearing. You may notice three bright stars directly overhead that form a large triangle. These stars are Deneb, Altair, and Vega. Together they form the Summer Triangle. Right in the middle of this stellar triangle is a beautiful and bright double star, Albireo. One can resolve the two stars and their colors in a good, steady pair of binoculars. One star shines a noticeably blue color while the other star shines a vivid red/orange color.

On cloudy nights there are plenty of fun astronomy resources for exploring the universe. One of my personal favorites of these resources is called “Galaxy Zoo”. It is a website that has images taken from the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey telescope and picks out thousands and thousands of galaxies that it sees. It then falls to us, the website users, to describe each galaxy with a few simple multiple choice-like questions that take only a minute or two to answer. The work of Galaxy Zoo users aids morphological and evolutionary studies of galaxies. To top it all off, you are likely seeing a galaxy that has never before been seen by another pair of human eyes…you’re the first! (Here’s the link: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/zookeeper/galaxy-zoo)

From the comfort of your computer desk, you can help contribute to science by becoming a user of Galaxy Zoo.

Did you know that some telescopes can be used on cloudy days? Most of the telescopes that we are used to look at things in the visible spectrum of light, which is what our eyes are sensitive to. Clouds block a lot of the visible light (hence why it’s darker outside when it’s cloudy) but do not block other parts of the spectrum such as light in the radio wavelengths (so radio telescopes can be used on cloudy days). The visible spectrum is only a SMALL fraction of the total electromagnetic spectrum. Different wavelengths can show us things that we otherwise would not be able to see, for example, thermal cameras see mostly infrared light and show us heat signatures. Viewing the universe in lots of different spectra can reveal lots of invisible features such as large gas structures and high energy objects. You can visit this website: http://www.chromoscope.net/ to view the galaxy and deep-space in nine different spectra to reveal and probe our own galaxy’s hidden objects and structure.

The universe as seen in H-alpha light- the light of glowing hydrogen. Explore the universe through different frequencies at Chromoscope.net.

Hopefully the weather works out for us stargazers at least by the end of this week. With sunset just after 7 PM, now is a perfect time to step outside just after dinner hours for a brief look into the cosmos. Bring out with you a pair of binoculars or just your eyes and perhaps a jacket and look up in any direction and be humbled.

Clear Skies!